Sindh plans to provide 60,000 CNG rickshaws: NBP Rozgar scheme
By Sabihuddin Ghausi
KARACHI, May 17: The Sindh government is entering into an arrangement with the National Bank of Pakistan for providing 60,000 four-stroke gas-driven rickshaws to the needy and deserving persons in the province for which a sum of Rs850 million to Rs1 billion is expected to be placed in 2007-08 provincial budget.
Well-placed and authoritative sources in the Sindh government informed Dawn that the amount for the NBP Rozgar Scheme rickshaws will be drawn from a specially created Social Security Relief Fund.
The government has already instituted a more than Rs6 billion special fund with a target to raise this amount to Rs40 billion in the coming years.
The idea is to invest this amount and finance social welfare schemes for poor and needy.
Allocation of this special fund in 2007-08 budget and the integration of an environment-friendly agenda with poverty-alleviation programmes come at a time when election campaign will be in full swing.
President Musharraf is seeking re-election from the present assemblies while the next general elections for national and provincial assemblies are due in January 2008.
``Howsoever, controlled, regulated and manipulated the process may be, the elections always need a touch of social welfare, a concern of rulers for poor and needy,’’ remarked an observer.
The election-year gift for the poor will ensure that some part of the fund will reach the deserving and needy if party supporters manage to gobble up a part.
Under the proposed programme, needy and deserving persons who are mainly drivers operating two-stroke rickshaws on a high rent, will be given rickshaws under the NBP Rozgar scheme.
The down payment — 10 per cent of loan--for the rickshaws will be drawn from the budgetary allocation and the owner will be expected to repay his loan in 60 equal monthly installments in five years after which he would be given the ownership papers.
Official figures show presence of more than 43,000 two-stroke fuel-driven rickshaws in Karachi and more than 15,000 rickshaws in other parts of the province.
The Sindh government has asked five companies to replace these old rickshaws with new environment-friendly rickshaws under a programme that will turn a tenant rickshaw driver to an owner.
For the last several years, say decades, rickshaws are being given to drivers on loan by a selected group of people who are mainly clustered in Patel Para, an old neighbourhood of Karachi. Patel Para was a scene of gun-shooting for more than five hours on May 12. The loan is advanced on unbelievable high interest rate of 120 to 140 per cent a year and the driver who runs rickshaw has to make regular payment every day.
He is like a bonded labour who is perpetually under the burden of debt. In case he dies or is maimed in a road accident, his son or brother has to take up the liability and drive rickshaw.
One of the many factors that have caused May 12 bloodbath in Karachi is the backlash of this particular group of persons who control a part of Karachi public transport with iron hands and are not ready to get it transformed into a modern efficient and comfortable system in which operators were equal and free from the burden of lenders.
The sources said the provincial government explored the idea of transforming the existing two-stroke fuel-driven rickshaws with four-stroke gas-driven rickshaws. But a senior official of Traffic Police in his technical report expressed the view of non-viability of such a change.
The Sindh government has already banned registration of two-stroke rickshaws and under the programme these rickshaws were to be banned altogether after June 30 next. But the government is now expected to extend this deadline of completely banning two-stroke engine rickshaws from June 30, 2007 to June 30, 2008.
The city government plans to revamp the public transport buses on modern lines also after police force has been restructured.
The status quo is with a strong vested interest having already reacted pretty harshly on the proposed changes and the leadership fears more clashes in future on this issue.
